


Arachnophobia

by Ramul



Category: Original Work
Genre: Arachnophobia, Cat, Gen, Horror, Spider Bite, arachnid abomination, dark attic, pregnancy gone awry, spider - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:48:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21526264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ramul/pseuds/Ramul
Summary: Linda wanted to find her cat in the new house and had to enter the spider-infested attic.
Kudos: 1





	Arachnophobia

**Author's Note:**

> More old stuff, this time from 2011. Part of a loose series of horror short stories focussed on phobias.

„Miles!"  
  
Linda went slowly through the mansion's corridors. Where was this overly-curious cat? She paused, listening to possible foot steps or meowing. She had moved with her husband into this mansion three months ago, to have a house with enough room for the child she expected in the next two months. The mansion was pleasantly cheap, for its former owner died of old age, and the renovation was coming along nicely. Not that Miles went into the room the former owner's body was found in, she thought with a shudder and moved on.   
  
„Miles!" Linda entered a wider part of the corridor where several doors were ...and froze. At the left to her, the trap door to the attic was half-open. How did... Then she heard what she was looking for the past twenty minutes. A muffled meowing, coming from behind the trap door.   
  
Maybe the closing mechanism was not properly holding the door and the cat climbed on top of the nearby cupboard and jumped onto the lid from there to explore the place above. Her husband James had opened the trap door only once when they took a look at the mansion for the first time and decided they will renovate the attic as the last part... or seal it, since they had enough space with the two floors already. She took the hook leaning in the corner and pulled the trap door down with it. The attached ladder rolled down with a creak, like some kind of invitation. Linda climbed it slowly and carefully, afraid of overexhausting herself in that critical part of her life.  
  
The view in the attic made her nose curl. Light came only from a small window that must have been cleaned years ago, the air up there was stagnant and filled with a penetrant smell of dust and old... things. The dust was omnipresent, lying in layers on the old furniture and forming balls on the ground. Linda wondered how the furniture was brought here through the evidently too small trap door opening and assumed there was once a flight of stairs leading here somewhere which had been removed by one of the previous owners, abandoning the attic for the most part. But what truly disgusted her was not the dust, but the masses of spider webs shimmering in different shades of grey in the dim light. Spider webs on the furniture, spider webs between the furniture and the few parts of walls that were not obscured by the things stored here, even the window was covered by layers of them, decorated with the many dark spots that once were the bugs caught in those traps. If there was one thing Linda truly hated, it were spiders. Even when she found a single spider she called James to remove it, and if he was not at home, the vacuum cleaner took care of this problem. But she couldn't take the cleaner up here, aside from not being able to find a power outlet up there without getting through the spider webs first... but then she found how to look for the cat.  
A row of paw prints led through the dust around a corner formed by a cupboard, a crate and two carpet rolls, leading away from the light of the window.  
  
„Miles!"  
  
No answer. After calling the cat's name five times and waiting for a response in between, she decided to go up completely and look where he was. There was no other solution, as much as the thought of walking through those spider-infested rooms repulsed her. Maybe he got stuck somewhere, though she doubted that. He was rather hunting the masses of eight-legged abominations living up there, she thought with disgust. With the hands as close to her chest as possible and with her pulse rushing in her ears, she walked on, staying away from the web-covered objects and following the tracks in the dust.  
  
Around the corner the place became darker and the tracks were harder to follow. It also didn't exactly improve her situation, as she shivered from the occasional caressing by a spider web she failed to notice. _At least the builders of the web didn't show up_. She was going to take a shower after this was over.  
  
A ray of light falling through a half-opened door caught her attention. The cat's tracks led through the opening. 'At least there would be more light than here', she thought. She opened the door touching the knob only with two fingers and wiped them off on her skirt immediately. Then she stopped to slow her hammering heart down a bit and looked at the scene in front of her.  
  
Another room stuffed with old, dust- and spiderweb-covered things illuminated by the dim light coming from a dirty window hung with more spider webs. Linda noticed a particularly fat spider in one of the webs and decided to keep as much distance to the window as possible. This creature made her attempts at calming her pulse futile. Then, a crashing sound made her jump. Something moved in the shadows in front of her. 'No', she told herself, 'this is not a giant spider. Be rational, Linda.'  
  
„Miles?"   
  
„Meooow."  
  
Linda breathed in with a smile on her lips. Her search was finally over. Now, she could finally leave this wretched place and take a shower... no, she would have to take a bath. And put her clothes into the washing machine, she added, looking down at herself in disgust. She could see the silk threads shining on her clothes. She moved on, following the soft sound of cat steps, keeping as much distance as possible from the window as the presence of spider webs on the furniture allowed, around a corner, to a dead end stuffed with old carpet rolls against a large wooden chest. Miles came out of the shadows between the carpet rolls and looked at her, blinking.  
  
Miles, never go up here ag...ugh." Linda curled her nose at the sight of the webs tangling around the cat's legs and torso. Miles demonstratively shook a hind leg. Fighting her disgust, she knelt down. _This is just silk. Like that wonderful blouse you got for your birthday._ She carefully picked at the webs on Miles' left hind leg. The loose sheet stretched, almost reluctant to leave the cat's fur before it frayed and came off. She wiped the silk off on the nearby carpet roll, before reaching back to the cat. As she began to pull off another piece of silk, a black, hairy spider ran over the cat's back into the direction of her hand. She couldn't pull the hand back in time.  
  
Her terrified scream made Miles flee in the direction he came from, flinging up the dust on the floor in large chunks. Linda didn't register it as she continued screaming, flailing her right arm wildly, just to get this abomination off her. She ripped off and entangled herself in the webs, before she felt the fangs sink into her upper arm. Her heart probably skipped a beat, before she felt the metallic taste of adrenaline in her mouth and with a wild swing of her arm the spider was flung off. Panting from fear and exhaustion, she looked at the bite. Two red pricks.  
  
She had to get back down. Fast. Her knowledge of spiders was very limited, but she didn't want to take any risks, especially because of the child. She staggered back the way she came from, her legs wobbly with fear. She had to lean against the furniture at the corner, before her legs would give away. She had to go on. From the webs at the window, the spider seemed to stare at her in a mocking manner. Was this just a panic-induced hallucination? Linda glared back at the creature, whose kin just threatened the life of her and her child. She had to move on. Through the door, which stood now fully open, into the darkness behind. Her legs were still wobbly, and she had to lean against the wall.  
  
' _What if it was the spider venom causing the unsteadyness?_ ', Linda thought. What if it took her before she could make it down to get to her mobile phone in the bedroom to phone the ambulance? The thought made her both whimper and gave her a short burst of strength to push herself off the wall and walk through the door. She had to be careful here. Not tripping over the rubble and furniture standing everywhere. She had to make it down as fast as possible to get the ambulance. Was it the darkness or was it the fear that made her not register the vision in the corners of her eyes? She staggered on, panting. Was it the panic that made her see the little stars in her field of vision? _Or was it the spider's venom in her veins?_  
  
Linda overlooked a protruding stick from a broom or another tool. She stumbled like in a haze to the other end of the narrow aisle, got hold of a carpet roll. The carpet roll slid off the parts of a dismantled cupboard it was leaned against and fell, taking Linda with her. She did faintly register her loss of balance, as if it was happening far away, not to her. As she hit the floor everything was darkness to her.  
  
It was intense, cramping pain that Linda registered first. She thought of the day her child would be born, then she would be able to hold him in her arms, together with James. No... Reality began to creep through her vision. _Only seven months. Too early..._ She opened her eyes. The vision of being in a birthing room was replaced by the dusty darkness of the attic. But the pain was real. No... she had to get to the phone! She couldn't give birth two months too early in this abandoned attic. She tried to get up, but, she noticed in further rising panic, her limbs didn't obey. In her desperation, she tried to scream, but everything she managed to produce were frantic heaves. She was absolutely helpless, staring at her swollen belly that was sending wave after wave of pain through her.   
  
Then she felt and saw a writhing inside her. _Too intense..._ The feeling was too intense from what she knew from the weak kicking of her child she occasionally felt and loved to feel. This time it felt like something entirely different. Something foreign. The writhing continued, concentrated to her bottom. It wanted out. The pain intensified as it began to dilate her. Slowly, centimeter, for centimeter, it moved forward. She kept staring at herself, panting and whimpering, unable to scream and locked in the position without being capable of doing anything against it. The pain was almost being drowned out by her fear. Then she felt a pop. This didn't feel like a baby. Something moved away from her, underneath her skirt, then, not far away from the hem, it started to rise. Her eyes followed the rising bulge of the skirt and the _thing_ she was giving birth to. As the skirt flipped back and revealed the thing underneath, the blood in her veins froze.  
  
It was a baby's hand. From the wrist up, it was covered in coarse black hair, flattened by the blood and slime covering it, and bore multiple joints. Her heaving became louder as a second hand appeared from underneath her skirt, then a third. A pain-filled minute later, which appeared to Linda like an eternity in a surreal hell, something larger showed up between her legs and its own arms. It turned its face to her and stared back out of eight, black, expressionless eyes. Then, as if to mock her, her mind formed the words, out of her control, which she could never wipe from her memory again.  
  
„Hello, mommy."


End file.
